


Acquainted With the Night

by kahvikummitus



Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Gen, hoshi and t'pol are bffs i'm sorry i don't make the rules, malcolm spends more time in sickbay than his own quarters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-11-20 15:51:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 10,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11338566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kahvikummitus/pseuds/kahvikummitus
Summary: There are few secrets on a ship the size of the NX-01. Some are revealed by general gossip, others by accident, others by exposure to a full moon.AU in which some members of the Enterprise crew are supernatural creatures and/or have magical powers.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had Wolf Song by Patrick Wolf stuck in my head while thinking about Enterprise, and these two separate parts of my brain got slightly jumbled together into “werewolf Malcolm Reed”, and that led to this. “It’ll be 1k words absolute max,” I said. “I don’t need to plan it,” I said. “I’ll get it written in like half an hour,” I said. This is the longest piece of fanfiction I have ever written.
> 
> As for the timing of this fic, I didn’t really think about that – it doesn’t really fit into the continuity in any meaningful way. I imagine it to be after the crew is quite well-established and friendly with each other, but nothing has happened with the Xindi.

It's a beautiful summer evening in San Francisco as the Enterprise leaves orbit, speeding out of the solar system at full impulse. Once they are clear of the planets and asteroids, and Commander Tucker gives the signal that the warp engines are ready, Captain Archer gives the command to go to warp. Ensign Mayweather punches in the command to the navigation computer, and grins as the ship obliges, its response time having been improved in the recent refits. The Earth’s sun is soon just another dot in an entire galaxy of dots.

  
Ensign Sato pats her console affectionately and then turns to her work, testing the subspace communication frequencies they use with Starfleet Command. It feels good to be back on the ship, even if the ship was only in spacedock for three weeks. The warm hum of the engines is already fading into the background, barely noticeable.

  
Lieutenant Reed is in his quarters, having felt poorly all day, when he feels the jump to warp. The first thing he did upon boarding the ship was to report to sickbay on the captain’s orders, to ensure he didn’t have any sort of illness that would require his return to Earth before they were out of the sector. There was nothing wrong with him that Phlox could find, so he has been sent to his quarters for rest. Indeed, he is feeling much better now – he takes a few deep breaths and gets up to look out the window where the stars are whizzing past. In the morning, he’ll go see Phlox again and be declared fit to work his next assigned duty shift.

  
“Nothing a little rest won’t cure, huh?” Phlox had said. No, indeed. Rest, and a speedy escape from Earth orbit.

  
\--

  
T’Pol, in her meditation, pictures a vast desert. It stretches out beyond what seems like the edge of the world. It is a desert she is familiar with, and she knows it isn’t all that big, not compared to the space she has travelled. Still, in her mind, it appears the way it did when she was a child, decades ago now.

  
She gets up and looks around, and the hot sand feels almost cool against her feet. In the distance, a road cuts through the sand. It doesn’t belong there, but it has been appearing in her meditation more and more often since she first joined the Enterprise. The past few weeks, it’s been missing, which confirms what she has long suspected – someone else’s magic is entering her meditation.

  
This isn’t really anything new. She may not understand what she has been seeing, but she knows the dark woods filled with bluebells don’t belong to her either, nor does the orbit of a strange planet she hasn’t visited herself though she knows its name. There is magic on the Enterprise, belonging to at least three others. (She suspects a fourth, but being an image only of the Enterprise itself, she cannot be sure if it isn’t just her own subconscious.)

  
\--

  
Once they are well on their way, and everyone has just about settled back to life on the ship, there is a mission briefing. The Enterprise is going to be in space a long time, with the next return to Earth in about a year, if nothing happens to call the ship back before then. In this year, they expect to make a loop around the McMinn nebula and map it as well as two rather interesting star clusters beyond it. It’s not an area mapped by anyone they know so far – the Vulcans haven’t been down that way much, it seems. (There is an unvoiced question of just what exactly the Vulcans have been doing with their warp drive, if so much nearby space remains unexplored.)

  
They start off travelling on the edges of Vulcan space, making a couple of brief stops in the first month or so of being in space again. The days are slow, with nothing much happening in the space between solar systems. There are no interesting space phenomena, no hostile aliens, in short, nothing much to look at. Routine surveys are carried out at systems they pass, their results uninteresting but all relayed back to Earth anyway.

  
“If only we could travel at the same speed as our communications do,” Trip says one evening at dinner. They’d dropped another subspace relay beacon in space that day, and the communication delay is now half an hour each way. They have been in space exactly a month. It is full moon on Earth, and Malcolm sleeps soundly that night away from its influence.

  
\--

  
Travis has made a habit of helping move furniture back in the mess hall after movie nights. Afterwards, he sits with a drink from the protein resequencer and listens to the sounds of the ship. From the mess hall windows, he watches the stars and tries to recognise constellations without much success. He counts himself so fortunate to be here.

  
\--

  
Finally, after two months and twenty-seven lightyears of travel, something happens.

  
The Enterprise enters a system with a binary star, three planets which orbit both the stars, and one planetoid which orbits only one of the stars. Archer thinks it looks interesting, T’Pol admits it looks worth studying closer, and one of the planets further out is found to be M-class, supporting non-sentient life. The Enterprise settles itself into an orbit around the planet, and one shuttle flies closer to the suns while another lands on the planet.

  
As Shuttlepod 1 approaches the suns, its pilot Travis begins to feel a bit uncomfortable. T’Pol checks the readings, and finds nothing unusual save a high amount of Bourner radiation, which does not normally affect humans. She adjusts the shield strength, however, in case that is the problem, and it helps. The other human, a lieutenant whose natural habitat is the science lab, has remained unbothered by the radiation. They spend a few hours taking readings and studying the relationship between the two suns (Travis insists he is able to fly). On their manoeuvre back between the two suns, Travis feels sweat on his skin and blood leaving his face, and then he loses consciousness.

  
Shuttlepod 2 touches down on the planet successfully, and the first thing Trip does is plant himself face-down in the grass. Once Malcolm realises it was intentional, he tells him off for doing just about the most careless thing one can do on a strange planet, save angering its inhabitants.

  
“You always were one to take the saying about ‘embracing alien life’ a bit too literally,” he says as Trip rolls over onto his back to cloud-watch. The science team with them hide their smiles, and start setting up the shelter. It’s the first thing they do these days on away missions, either locating or setting up a shelter, especially when they don’t know how long a mission will last. In case the weather changes, or something else happens, and they can’t leave by shuttle or transporter.

  
Evening comes, night approaches, and a round yellow moon rises. Malcolm isn’t overly bothered – he’s seen a lot of moons, even full ones, in his time with Starfleet – but this one, somehow, feels different. His muscles begin to cramp, his head begins to swim. Before Trip can ask him what’s wrong, he calls for an emergency transport.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this far. A quick FAQ, not that I have been asked these things:
> 
> “So if Travis and Malcolm are magic, who are the other two??” This fic has multiple chapters.
> 
> “What’s Bourner radiation?” If it’s real, then that’s my bad. I just made something up and named it after Bournville chocolate which I was eating at the time.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's chapter two! I have actually written this whole thing (except for the epilogue), because I am notoriously bad at finishing writing projects and didn't want to upload anything that wasn't finished. Uploading projects especially makes me not finish them. It's a curse or something.

The Horizon docks at the spaceport and Travis starts unloading cargo. The crew have, by now, learnt the optimum speed for unloading - slow enough that they don't compromise safety, but fast enough to guarantee maximum time for leave. After all, what's a spaceport good for if you can't enjoy it?

  
Finally, the job is all done and Travis is off, his brother in tow, with their parents giving last-minute cautioning remarks. Travis and Paul have long since stopped listening to them, the spaceport familiar to them, and they float in the low gravity past the cargo bays and out into the more social parts of the station. Gravity there is slightly stronger, and they plant their feet on the station floor.

  
They have three days to spend on this station, before they head off and continue on their route with a new shipment. Paul says he plans on making the most of it - the recreation facilities have been updated since their last stop there, with promises that tired cargo haulers will leave the station "feeling like a new man". Travis doesn't yet suspect that he will be the one leaving with that feeling, trying to figure out just what is left of the man he was before.

  
\--  
  


It is an accident. Dellor, an Ascellan, has never met a human before, and they sit there for a while trying to figure out what to do. Travis wishes he was a Vulcan, able to stay calm or at least appear so.

  
"All that effort to be careful, and then I trip over something and give you a curse. Bloody typical."

  
There's a moment when Travis wonders who exactly programmed the translators on the station, and where they got the English language matrix from, because the other translations have been clunky at best while that expression comes across perfectly, the snarky tone with it. It makes him laugh despite his horror at the situation, and when he explains it to Dellor, they both sit there laughing for a good minute, even if it isn't quite funny enough to warrant that. The laughing is good, it relaxes them.

  
Now that the first shock of the situation is gone, Dellor is able to be helpful and calm.

  
The wording of the curse is very specific, and has not been lost in time the way most Earth curses have. There is the matter of blood - Dellor is not able to say whether this will mean Ascellan or Human blood for Travis, or if it will even make a difference. "The curse just says blood," Dellor explains. "On long flights, I have packets of dried synthetic stuff, works just as well as fresh blood from living creatures, and I can give you a bunch of packets. At home, I get it synthesised from a replicator. You feed in the molecular pattern - I can give you the pattern as well, if you have technology like that." Travis explains about protein resequencers.

  
The next issue is that of Bourner radiation. Travis has vaguely heard of it, but asks Dellor to give more details to make sure the translator has given the right word, and that they are talking about the same thing.

  
Lastly, there is the advice on how to avoid passing the curse on. With a wry half-smile on his face, Dellor says this may be something he needs to work on himself.

  
\--

  
They part on friendly, if awkward terms. Travis has little experience in dealing with people who accidentally pass on alien vampire curses to him, and they don't keep in touch. For the next two years, Travis makes up drinks with dried packets of synthetic blood. He silently prays that they don't run into Bourner radiation.

* * *

  
There are three people in sickbay that evening. Travis, recovering from the suns. Malcolm, recovering from the moon. Phlox, confused.

  
Hoshi keeps the people down on the planet up to date on Malcolm’s situation, first confirming his arrival an then relaying the confusion. She asks them, by Phlox’s request, if any of them have experienced any strange symptoms, and relays their negative answer back to Phlox.

  
“Is Malcolm gonna be alright?” Trip asks over the comm, although he sounds unsure, like he’s afraid of the answer.

  
“Yes. I think so,” Hoshi replies, hoping it’s not a lie. She draws strength from the warm grey metal surrounding her station on the bridge, and when her shift is over, she walks through the familiar corridors to sickbay, her hand trailing along the wall the whole way. The whole night, Hoshi sits in sickbay, watching over the restless sleep of the two people she considers her best friends on the ship. She doesn’t know what’s wrong with them, but she helps Travis take sips of water whenever he wakes up, and helps Phlox hold Malcolm down when he fights something in his sleep.

  
At around three, while Phlox feeds his creatures, Travis is awake and asks her for a favour. A specific thing from the protein resequencer, something she’s never heard of. Nevertheless, she goes and fetches it for him along with a cup of tea for herself. Whatever the stuff is – and the word “gunk” is the first thing that comes to mind – it seems to work for Travis. He falls asleep soon after drinking it and sleeps soundly until morning. Malcolm, too, eventually stops trying to leave his bed and hunt down something the others cannot see. By seven, all has been calm for two hours and the eyes Malcolm opens are his own.

  
Phlox lets his patients out for breakfast, and in the mess hall, Malcolm speaks.

  
“I’m sorry if I frightened you, Hoshi,” he says, and she gives his arm a squeeze from across the table.

  
“I was so worried. About both of you,” she replies, throwing concerned looks at both Travis and Malcolm.

  
“That’s not what I meant,” he explains. “Sometimes, when I’m like that, I don’t know who I am or where I am. I’m not myself, and I can act quite... unpredictably.”

  
It hadn’t even occurred to Hoshi to be afraid of him, having been so busy being afraid for him.

  
“You shouldn’t worry about me,” he says, but she is quite determined to worry anyway. It’s what she’s here for.

  
\--

  
When the away team returns from the planet’s surface a couple of hours after breakfast, Archer gives the command to get as far from the system as possible, at maximum warp. They do just that, another shift’s pilot in Travis’s seat, and Hoshi in her quarters as Phlox insisted she make up for the sleep she didn’t get during the night. Phlox himself goes over the medical history of his recent patients, looking for clues, but finds little. T’Pol goes over data gathered in the system they just left, but nothing gives any hint as to the origins of the mysterious symptoms of the two crew members.

  
It’s a joke Trip makes later that day, just before movie night starts, that leads T’Pol to suspect a supernatural explanation instead.

  
“Maybe Malcolm’s a werewolf,” he says to Phlox. “It was a full moon down there.” It then takes a moment to convince Phlox that Trip was, in fact, joking and that lycanthropy is not considered a valid medical diagnosis. T’Pol notices Malcolm’s smile comes even less easily than usual, and makes a mental note to look into certain aspects of Earth mythology. After all, she knows better than most how deeply rooted myths can be in fact.

  
\--

  
“So what was in that stuff I brought you last night?” Hoshi asks Travis, helping him push the tables back where they belong. He sighs, putting one last chair in his place, and pulling another drink of that kind from the protein resequencer.

  
“It’s medicine,” he says. “For an Ascellan virus I got, years ago. It’s why I was so sensitive to the radiation. The virus and Bourner radiation aren’t exactly friendly.”

  
“It would be a more believable story if you didn’t try to hide it. If you’re ill, why doesn’t Phlox know?”

  
Travis knows he has exactly five seconds to come up with some convincing lie, so he doesn’t even try. Hoshi, to his surprise, believes him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again for reading.
> 
> Also, yes, the implication is that Travis had intimate relations with an alien prior to this alien accidentally turning him into a vampire. A male alien. Because Travis is gay. (Sources: mirror!Travis had his gay ear pierced, also I'm the one writing this fic so I can make him gay if I want.)


	3. Chapter 3

Life on the Enterprise goes back to normal, relatively, after that. The ship travels on, held together by Trip and his team. A Bourner radiation alarm is set up on the bridge. Malcolm spends his duty shifts on the research and development side of things, improving the force field he has developed. Outside of duty hours, Hoshi devotes a great chunk of her time to weapons and combat training.

  
It’s not that Malcolm minds this time spent alone with Hoshi, teaching her how to defend herself and the ship, but one day he asks her why she needs to learn all this.

  
“Your abilities are now far beyond what is required or expected from you. You could probably defend this ship single-handedly.”

  
“If something happens to the ship, Malcolm, it won’t be because I didn’t do enough,” she says, and it’s not the answer he was expecting. The small smile on his face fades into a concerned frown.

  
“Hey, we’ve been alright so far, haven’t we? Unless there’s a threat you know about and I don’t.” It’s both an attempt to lighten the mood and a genuine concern.

  
“No, there’s nothing. And you’re right. I just felt so helpless at the start – none of the training really prepared me for what it was like on a starship. I don’t want to feel like that again.”

  
There’s more to it than that, but Malcolm lets it go, and they keep going with the weapons practice.

  
\--

  
They reach the McMinn nebula after a total of four months and nine days of travel. There hasn’t been an awful lot to look at on the way – a few interesting systems, a handful of pre-warp civilisations, a number of stars just recently born and others well into old age and dying – just enough to keep stellar cartography busy. The nebula is the main event, what they are in this part of space for.

  
The morning they reach it, Hoshi wakes up to its bright swirling lights outside her window, and she gets an early breakfast just to see it more clearly from the mess hall windows.

  
The communications delay is now an hour and a half each way, and Hoshi puts together a packet two or three times each shift to send back to Starfleet Command – data from their surveys, non-urgent requests for information, general messages. In between those are the daily non-urgent personal messages. Back at Starfleet, a team of engineers is working to find ways to shorten communications delays. Warp 9.999 is fast, but in an emergency it will not be fast enough. For now, though, it will have to be.

  
“Wouldn’t it be cool to run into a new life-form?” Travis muses one day in the mess hall. They have gone surprisingly long without meeting anyone new, months without any new first contacts. Not even familiar species are around, save a few Andorian ships here and there, as well as the occasional Vulcan.

  
Travis gets his wish, though – on the outskirts of the nebula, they run into a species who are recently warp-capable, and are just now starting their first colonies outside of their own system. Archer and T’Pol get into an argument over just how much information and technology to share with their new friends, Archer ignores T’Pol’s advice as he usually does, and a very nice week is spent on the planet.

  
(It is also as a result of this shore leave that Starfleet adopts certain guidelines regarding sexual contact with members of alien species during missions, but fortunately there is no lasting damage to any parties. Trip, who has learnt to laugh at his own past misfortune, comforts the ensign with a “at least you didn’t get pregnant”.)

  
Two nights before the Enterprise is due to leave and continue on its journey, one of the planet’s moons aligns with the sun in such a way as to cause it to rise round and full above the planet. It’s late at night, and the Enterprise crew are in the guest quarters assigned to them, and in his own quarters, Malcolm looks out the window.

  
Not having paid much attention to the moons before, he tries to take a deep breath and talk himself out of a panic. Remaining calm is his best chance. Going up to the Enterprise won’t help this time – it’s in synchronous orbit around the planet, just above him, and much closer than the moon. “Under a full moon” were the exact and specific words of the curse (though he wonders about all the full moons he’s seen before, ones that haven’t affected him), and the Enterprise is therefore no protection while it is in orbit. Since there is no escape, his best option is to find Hoshi. She’ll figure something out, even if that something is to stun him with a phase-pistol.

  
It doesn’t work out quite like that. He has already begun his transformation when he reaches the guest quarters Hoshi is staying in, and he manages to breathe out a “help me” before he needs to run. He needs to get back somewhere he can’t hurt other people.

  
“Malcolm?”

  
So she’s following him. He doesn’t turn around, because that’s what his instincts tell him to do and he can’t follow those right now. Those instincts will either kill Hoshi or turn her into what he is.

  
“Malcolm!”

  
Her shouting has now brought T’Pol out of her guest quarters, but he just rushes past her.

  
“Malcolm, stop!”

  
And he does. He stops. Everything stops.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t remember how communications delays worked in ENT – I know in the other series communications travelled at essentially the speed of plot. I’m going to assume technological advances between ENT and other series. (The way it works in my head is ships can only send communications at warp 9.999 but at some point they develop subspace relays which can send messages onwards at warp 10 between them. This is what allows for basically instantaneous communication within a certain area of space, and the location/functioning of those relays can change depending on what the plot requires. I have thought way too much about this.)
> 
> Also, clearly these end notes were about the most important thing in the chapter.
> 
> Anyway, thank you for reading.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There’s vague hints of potential Malcolm/Hoshi in this chapter – I don’t intend for this to be a shippy fic, and there’s no more content of that sort after this chapter, which is why it’s not under the relationship tag for them. I feel at this point I need to apologise both to those who ship this pairing (for not having enough of the content) and to those who don't (for including it at all).

By the time the last bus of the evening is forty minutes late, Malcolm accepts that it isn't turning up. He briefly considers ringing his parents to come pick him up, but he is extremely aware of the fact that he shouldn't be out this late at night. After this night, his mother will tell him that rules are for his safety, and the point of curfew is to prevent things like this, and if he's going to be home late he should always call. But he's young enough, and thinks he knows his parents well enough, to believe that the point of rules is the punishment that comes from breaking them.

  
It's the 22nd century, he thinks, and the local council still haven't sorted out public transport. He follows the road out of the village, the country lanes deserted, the occasional car passing him, but no sign of the bus whose route he is following. After half an hour, he reaches his own bus stop, and then makes his way down the forest lane.

  
Afterwards, he doesn't take much comfort in the fact that this would have happened even if he did get the bus, which now speeds past on the main road that he has turned his back to.

  
It is his father who finds him the next morning, once the family have realised Malcolm never returned home the night before. Malcolm is lying face down in bluebells by the side of the lane, his arm covered in blood, and Stuart Reed believes his son dead the entire time as he calls 999 and waits for the medical transport. He continues to believe it as he packs his wife and daughter in the car to follow the ambulance to the hospital, and it is not until he sees the heartbeat on the monitor that he is able to believe Malcolm is still alive.

  
The day is interrupted only by two phone calls, the first from Madeline's school and the second from Malcolm's, asking why they hadn't turned up that day, and it's up to Mary Reed to explain.

  
Three days later, Malcolm is released from hospital. He sits out on the steps in the garden, watching the moon rise with a sliver missing from its side, and Madeline brings a cup of tea out for him. As stereotypical as it seems, tea is how their family communicates. A cup of tea for every "I love you" or "I was worried about you" or "I hope you feel better" left unsaid. Malcolm drinks a lot of tea in the days that follow, from mugs stained with tannins from years of unspoken love.

  
"We all thought you'd died," she says eventually.

  
"Come on Mads, I'm not gonna just die and leave you here. Who else is gonna look after you when you start at Queensbridge?"

  
"I don't need you to look after me," Madeline replies, although she admits the thought of attending Queensbridge is a lot less terrifying when she knows her brother is there.

 

* * *

 

When Malcolm wakes up, it’s in sickbay. He hates waking up in sickbay.

  
Phlox grins widely upon his patient waking, and Malcolm’s brain vaguely realises that the pressure on his arm is Hoshi’s hand. The pressure lifts, but otherwise she doesn’t move away.

  
T’Pol, on the other side of the room, is displeased.

  
“Lieutenant. I’m glad you are awake, but you should have informed medical staff about your condition. You are very fortunate that Ensign Sato knew what to do.”

  
Hoshi turns to T’Pol, confused, because she has no idea what she did. One moment Malcolm was transforming into a werewolf, the next he was lying face-down on the floor with claws retreating back into his hands and the fur magically un-growing. She hadn’t had a plan besides catching up with Malcolm and making sure he didn’t hurt himself.

  
“What did I do?” she asks.

  
“You called his name three times.”

  
“That’s all you have to do?” Malcolm asks. The werewolf who turned him didn’t stick around to give him a manual or crash course in lycanthropy, and knowing this would have saved him years of misery.

  
“I would have expected you to be aware of werewolf myths. They have more truth to them than some might think.”

  
“Werewolf myths sort of lost their appeal.”

  
Malcolm sits up with help from Phlox and Hoshi and ignores the slight light-headedness the curse left him with. After all, it’s nothing he isn’t used to.

  
“So next time, all I need is for someone to say my name three times and I don’t transform?”

  
“Unless you would prefer to be shot with a silver bullet,” T’Pol says, and there is a surprised pause where no one is entirely sure whether she just made a joke or not. “I should mention,” she continues, “that there are different versions of the myth. In many of them, only a person who is… close to the werewolf has the ability to stop the transformation. Whether Ensign Sato’s ability to return you to human form is unique may be something you would wish to take into consideration.”

  
Malcolm blushes while Hoshi pales, and T’Pol stops them before either say anything. “Of course, the details of your treatment are between you and your doctor.”

  
It’s better this way. While she has no specific reason to suspect anything between the Ensign and the Lieutenant, it’s best to stay out of it anyway. It only becomes her business if she finds out about it, and she fully intends to not find out unless it begins to interfere with the ship and its mission. For now, T’Pol has other things to concern herself with.

  
\--

  
The official story, the one told to Captain Archer and the rest of the crew, is that Lieutenant Reed was suddenly taken ill in the night. Fortunately, he was able to alert Hoshi and T’Pol, who administered first aid and got him into sickbay. While Archer, understandably, is curious to know the nature of this illness, Phlox reminds him of something called doctor-patient confidentiality.

  
Their hosts, equally concerned for the welfare of their guests, offer any help they may be able to give, but Malcolm assures them he is feeling quite alright, thank you. One more night is spent on the planet – Malcolm spends this back on the Enterprise where Phlox and Hoshi can keep watch, the moon still too round tonight to take unnecessary risks. Malcolm remains human without help, but it is not the best night’s sleep he’s ever had, his mind being too busy with thinking to settle in for sleep. It seemed unbelievable that something so simple could have saved him the night before.

  
They leave orbit mid-afternoon, Enterprise time. Hoshi chases down department heads for their official reports so she can pass them on to Starfleet Command – the xenobiology team has no report, and she has to convince them that “we don’t have a report because our program exceeded the computing capacity allocated to us” is all she needs, but she has to send something. Trip concerns himself with some maintenance or other, and T’Pol pretends even she isn’t bored by the geology team's fifty-page preliminary analysis of the main planet.

  
\--

  
Malcolm and Travis set up a supernatural support group, which in practice is the two of them sitting on the observation deck at some late hour of the night. Travis drinks the synthetic blood, Malcolm drinks tea, and they both wish the protein sequencer could sequence them something stronger.

  
“I think this blood stuff would go great in a cocktail. A Bloody Mary. What do you think?” Travis says.

  
They’ve dragged chairs over to the window, and by the time Trip finds them, they look like they’ve been in there a while. Travis is sitting upside down, his feet over the back of the chair and his head hanging off the seat, while Malcolm is curled up semi-comfortably on his own chair.

  
“What’s this then, fellas?” Trip asks. “This a private party or can anyone join?”

  
Travis looks to Malcolm for confirmation before inviting Trip to sit down. He attempts to sit up himself with a kind of unsuccessful crunch move, and Trip plops himself down on the floor between the two of them.

  
“We celebrating or mourning tonight?” Trip asks.

  
“Neither,” Malcolm replies. “I believe you’d call it ‘male bonding’.”

  
“Oh, I see. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

  
“Nah, we were just talking about how annoying you are,” Travis says, making another, more successful attempt at righting himself.

  
Trip’s presence, though it forces them to pause their conversation on the joys of being cursed, is welcome to them both. It’s a good reminder of the fact that the supernatural isn’t the biggest, most important thing in their lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Queensbridge is an entirely fictitious secondary school in the partially fictitious town Malcolm lives in. There may be a school of that name somewhere - if there is, I am unaware of it.
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter ended up being 98% T’Pol and Hoshi being BFFs. They’re like, the only characters in this chapter. So if you like that sort of content, this is the chapter for you.

Somehow, T’Pol inviting Hoshi to meditate with her has become habit.

  
“Picture yourself somewhere in an open space,” T’Pol begins, though Hoshi no longer needs instructions, her mind already there. While T’Pol imagines a desert, back on Vulcan, Hoshi is out in space, in the orbit of an unfamiliar star, lightyears of void around her.

  
“Why did you ask me to meditate with you?” Hoshi asked after their fifth evening spent together with a candle in T’Pol’s quarters.

  
“I felt it might be of use to you. You have seemed tense and worried lately. Meditation often helps with that.”

  
“Oh. But you didn’t have to do this for me.”

  
“It was no inconvenience. I consider you a friend.”

  
Hoshi smiles and hugs T’Pol before returning to her own quarters for the night.

  
\--

  
T’Pol may not sleep as much as the rest of the crew, but she still requires sleep. Most nights, she doesn’t dream. That is, most nights, she doesn’t remember her dreams, and they have no significance. They are just the by-product of natural brain activity during sleep. Only rarely do the dreams form something more coherent, something that stays with her after she wakes, and often that is a result of the slight psychic ability she has as a Vulcan – that is, they are not dreams in the regular sense.

  
One of these nights, she is in the same desert her meditation brings her to. She lays on the sand, and desert plants grow over her (which, when she wakes, is all that suggests that this was just a dream without significance). She lifts her arm, and a cloud of sand rises with it. She gets up. Her feet do not sink into the sand, and a path forms directing her due north. As she walks, yellow desert flowers push their way out of the ground by the path, and when she stops, it is night and she is facing a cave.

  
T'Pol can survive for long periods of time in the heat of the sun, without water, like a desert plant. Most Vulcans do not have her ability to survive. And yet, she now feels over-heated and thirsty.

  
She wakes up, freezing.

  
\--

  
Seventeen days later, the Enterprise is studying a system where one of the planets has an M-class atmosphere. It is a desert planet, much like Vulcan geographically, but with no signs of life. T’Pol, citing a Vulcan ritual she makes up practically on the spot (with enough detail and so convincingly that Hoshi, when she discovers the lie, suggests T’Pol look into doing improvised theatre if she is ever on Earth for long enough), asks if she may take a day’s shore leave there.

  
Captain Archer gives permission, saying they might as well take a day for maintenance, just the small things they can’t do while the ship is travelling at warp for most of the day. Trip, however, questions her short holiday.

  
“Why the hell would you wanna go down there of all places? There’s nothin’ there.”

  
“It resembles Vulcan. That will make the ritual easier to perform.”

  
“Surely you can’t be thinkin’ of goin’ down there alone. Shouldn’t you take someone with you?”

  
T’Pol considers this. It occurs to her that Trip is, in his round-about way, volunteering to accompany her.

  
“Captain,” she begins, “with your permission, I would like for Ensign Sato to accompany me, if she agrees.”

  
Hoshi agrees, keen to learn more about Vulcan culture, and Captain Archer sees no reason why he couldn’t spare her, so T’Pol and Hoshi pack overnight bags and head off in a shuttle.

  
\--

  
“You should know,” T’Pol says once they have landed and set up their shelter, “that I was not entirely truthful back on the bridge. I am not here to perform a Vulcan ritual. I trust that you will keep my secret.”

  
Hoshi’s hands freeze, with sunglasses halfway to her face, but she makes a promise to not reveal anything T’Pol says to her while they are down here. She finishes protecting herself from the sun, and leans against the wall of red stone they have set up camp next to. Ahead of her, the desert stretches out for miles, more of the same red rock but covered in a layer of sand, with fine grains blowing across it with the occasional breeze. T’Pol takes her shoes off, walks across the sand without sinking into it, and then lets her magic run through her.

  
\--

  
“Am I a magnet for the supernatural or what?” Hoshi says when they have finished eating dinner that evening. “You’re the third person with magic to come out to me on the Enterprise, and you’ve all said I was the first person on the ship you’ve confided to.”

  
“Ensign Mayweather and Lieutenant Reed both consider you a close friend, as do I.” Hoshi frowns.

  
“I didn’t know you knew about Travis.”

  
“Humans are not normally affected by Bourner radiation. There were not many explanations for why Ensign Mayweather would be an exception.”

  
“I guess.” There is a brief moment of silence. T’Pol packs up the food containers (“lunch-boxes” as Hoshi calls them). Then, she speaks up again.

  
“Perhaps you are a ‘magnet for the supernatural’, as you say. I suspect it has something to do with your own magic.”

  
“How do you know about my magic?” Hoshi asks, stunned.

  
“I did not know. I suspected. You expressed no surprise when you discovered what Mayweather and Reed were, and I was aware they were not the only supernaturals on board the ship. I do not know what you are, but something about the magic you project has always made you easy to rely on. I mean no disrespect to the crew when I say this, but there are very few on the ship I would trust with my life.”

  
“That’s not very logical. I’ve never given much reason for that. I don’t think I’d trust myself with my own life.”

  
“It is not about logic. It is about magic.”

  
Hoshi has been on the receiving end of three confessions of supernatural status. Now, on this quiet planet, T’Pol becomes the first to find out what Hoshi is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.


	6. Chapter 6

T'Pol, age ten, feels there are more interesting things on her planet than the holy sites her mother enjoys visiting. They have taken a transport to a town within a half-day's walk of their destination, and T'Les tries to make it more fun for her daughter by including a camping trip and hike in their brief holiday. The sun is lowering itself slowly toward the horizon over the desert, and T'Pol is given permission to go for a walk as long as she gets back before the sun is down.

  
T'Les tries not to be concerned at her daughter's recent preference for solitude, spending most of her days either in her room or sitting in the garden. Whatever it was, T'Les hoped it was a phase. Her entire childhood, T'Pol had felt very strongly and expressed her emotions, too young still to learn the control characteristic of her species. This silence and withdrawal appeared much like that control on the surface, but T'Les would rather her child grow up emotional than like this, her thoughts and feelings below the surface rather than dealt with in the logical way.

  
T'Pol wanders off, walking along the rock formation that marks the eastern edge of the desert. When she finds a good spot for climbing, she begins making her way up, wondering just how far it is possible to see from the top. Halfway there, she spots a cave. Her sense of adventure urges her in, and she loses track of time. The sunlight begins to fade from the cave, and when she gets out, she doesn't know where her mother is.

  
The night wind is cooler than she expected, and she is afraid to climb down with so little light left in the sky, for fear that she will fall and hurt herself. As she sits on the ledge, neurons she cannot control filling her synapses with fear, she fails to notice that something has followed her out of the cave.

  
T'Pol doesn't believe in magic. She doesn't believe even now, when a friendly voice guides her down the rocks and across the sand to where her mother is waiting. She doesn't believe as the sand forms swirly patterns as she walks, her feet never sinking into it. She doesn't believe until she is back home and the magic hasn't gone away. She can never find a logical explanation for it, and she never tries.

 

* * *

 

The Enterprise has been away from Earth for seven months, and is technically on its way back now. At current speeds, the estimate is that they will enter Earth orbit in exactly five months and two days. The crew knows this because T’Pol announces a very specific estimate that morning, down to the minute, and then follows it with an uncertainty based on the different velocities of the ship so far during the mission.

  
The bridge crew roll their eyes, but in a good-natured way, and then turn their attention to the alien ship which is changing course to meet them.

  
Friendly greetings are exchanged between the two ships, and first contact goes smoothly for the first three hours, during which a small team from the Enterprise is sent over to the other ship. The team consists of five people: Captain Archer, Trip Tucker, Hoshi Sato, and two scientists. Four people return to the Enterprise alive – Liz Cutler returns in the form of a corpse.

  
It is a misunderstanding, an incident in the biology labs that Cutler is being given a tour of, preventable, but nothing can be done about it afterwards. Hoshi can feel her for the eleven seconds it takes for her to die, and afterwards it is only by a great deal of will-power that she keeps herself from lashing out at the aliens. This, then, is the real meaning of being a ship’s guardian spirit. Hoshi wishes she had never experienced it.

  
\--

  
“There was nothing I could do. So what’s the point of me? I’m supposed to be able to do something, it’s what I’m here for.”

  
Hoshi is in T’Pol’s quarters, sitting across from her with a candle between them, but she cannot calm her mind enough to meditate tonight. T’Pol has no useful words to offer, so she stays silent.

  
“I felt her die. That’s the most useless gift. I have no powers, I couldn’t stop it.”

  
“Perhaps you are not aware of your powers,” T’Pol says. “Were you previously aware that you would be able to feel the death of a crew member?”

  
“No. I had no idea.”

  
\--

  
Days pass and evenings after shifts are spent in research, Hoshi trying to understand exactly what her role is and what she can do with it. T’Pol longs to set her feet on sand once more, the brief time on the desert planet not helping much with the need to be near her element. She loves space, would rather be nowhere else, but the magic inside her disagrees. Travis experiments with melting drinking chocolate into the synthetic blood, sick of its taste and everything it represents. The combination sort of works, and he drinks it, thinking of how lucky he is to have been cursed with something that can be so easily controlled, stirred in with chocolate and made to taste sweet.

  
Hoshi has missed her regular training sessions with Malcolm for a week when he comes looking for her. He finds her in her quarters, her desk covered in notes which she clears away as she invites him to sit down.

  
“I didn’t want to bother you before,” he says.

  
“I’m sorry, Malcolm, I’ve had a lot on my mind.”

  
“You know I’m here for you, for whatever you want to talk, or not talk about.”

  
She has been considering for a while now whether she should confide in him. He doesn’t know the half of what’s been bothering her, the reason for her current isolation and why she has been spending so much time with T’Pol lately. It occurs to her that Malcolm might be one of the few people on the ship to understand what she is going through – it is his job to protect the ship as much as it is her calling, and she has seen how he looks whenever he feels he has failed in that job. Maybe it’s time to trust him the way he trusts her.

  
And so, she tells him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading.


	7. Chapter 7

Another few months pass peacefully. Not every ship they meet out in space can be friendly, unfortunately. Malcolm briefly wonders if he should be slightly less excited to do his job, but the excitement doesn’t last long anyhow as their new enemy blasts its way through their shields. There’s a hit near the bridge, and a cascade effect blows up one side of the bridge wall, the side Malcolm is on.

  
Hoshi rushes over, and no one on the bridge quite knows how to react. Abandoning her station to assist an injured crewmate is exactly what Hoshi has been trained not to do, not during a tactical alert. Archer is just about to tell her off when he sees her step right over Malcolm’s injured body and take over his station.

  
“Sorry for disobeying orders,” she says to Archer, “but there were no other tactical officers on the bridge.” She requests backup personnel from the armoury, someone to take Malcolm to sickbay, and a replacement for the comm station, and then starts on disabling the enemy ship, shouting commands to the armoury through the comm system. She gets in two successful hits while Travis manoeuvres the ship so as to protect the Enterprise, and by the time Malcolm’s replacement from the tactical crew arrives on the bridge, there is very little left to do. The enemy ship is disabled.

  
The shields flicker back on, but tactical alert is over. Malcolm looks like he’s forgotten about the bit of wall embedded in his side until Phlox rushes in, injects him with something from the emergency med kit stashed on the bridge, and then enlists a junior officer to help carry him to sickbay. The bridge is unnaturally quiet for a moment. Hoshi awkwardly crosses back to her own station, feeling the rest of the bridge crew watching her, and suggests she open a comm channel to the enemy ship, talk about it.

  
\--

  
They don’t get to talk about it, not in the way Hoshi suggested, because before she has a comm line open, another alien ship appears seemingly from out of nowhere, and she and the rest of the bridge crew are transported onto it.

  
The room they materialise in appears to be some sort of meeting room, and Trip has a fleeting thought of how meeting rooms seem to be set up exactly the same all over the galaxy, and then the alien leader at the head of the table speaks up.

  
“I will let you go,” the alien says, “if you will give me the person responsible for disabling the other ship.”

  
The Enterprise crew have no intention of giving up Hoshi, but in a situation like this there is little that can be done to argue (not that Archer and the others don’t give it their best effort). The Enterprise is only one ship, its main tactical officer in sickbay and its entire bridge crew gone, its shields down and its weapons depleted. If this ship could sneak up on them, who was to say how many other ships these aliens had out here? How easily they could destroy the Enterprise?

  
And so, after a few minutes of unsuccessful attempts at diplomacy and a number of threats that the aliens could never take seriously, the rest of the crew are transported back to the Enterprise bridge and Hoshi is walked down a corridor towards the alien brig. The ship is huge, Hoshi notes, filled with lights too bright to be comfortable for human eyes, its corridors a pleasant light colour with computer panels embedded in at regular intervals. Signs on doors speak of pleasant interiors, and Hoshi can imagine the ship being quite nice, if one wasn’t a prisoner on it.

  
The alien escorting her receives some message on a communicator about the Enterprise hanging around, and then there is talk of destroying it. Hoshi feels horror, and then anger, and then magic. She stops.

  
“You will not destroy the Enterprise,” she says, surprising herself as much as the guard.

  
Later, she will swear it all happened in about twenty seconds, but it took a few minutes longer than that. The guard makes to grab her, to drag her along, and the computer panel on the wall next to them explodes. If they were in an action movie like the kind Trip always picks for movie night, that is when all hell should have broken loose, Hoshi thinks. Instead, there is a confused silence, during which Hoshi takes the opportunity to begin running away. She likes to think she is heading for the bridge, though she has no idea where that is. She makes it down three different corridors before being caught by a security team, and it is two corridors later that the alien leader is facing her.

  
“Trying to cause trouble?”

  
Another computer panel send sparks flying across the corridor.

  
“If you so much as scratch the Enterprise, I will tear this ship down with my teeth.”

  
“You and what army?”

  
“Just me.”

  
Hoshi closes her eyes, and the ship powers down. There is a two-second delay before the emergency lights turn on. She opens her eyes again, and the emergency lights go out with cracks and sparks.

  
“How big is your fleet?” she asks.

  
A few minutes later, Hoshi Sato is back on the bridge of the Enterprise, and the aliens are telling Archer how much they’d enjoy a nice diplomatic chat.

  
\--

  
“What exactly,” Archer asks, “should I put in my report?”

  
“I heard them threaten to destroy the Enterprise even though they had made a deal so I… got angry.”

  
“You got angry, and they backed away, sent you back, and wished us luck on our journey?”

  
“I don’t really have a better explanation for what happened.”

  
Archer dismisses Hoshi from his ready room and then sits down to his report. First his communications officer takes over the tactical station without authorisation. She disables, and could have destroyed, a ship with better shields and superior firepower. Then, when taken prisoner on another ship, she gets angry and that is enough for her release. While Ensign Sato has been on his ship long enough that he is careful not to underestimate her, this is crossing over into the unbelievable. He writes it into his report anyway, with a note that should Ensign Sato ever wish to seek different duties, she would do very well at tactical.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the "you and what army?" line but. If you can't write cliches occasionally then what's the point of writing, huh?
> 
> Thank you for reading.


	8. Chapter 8

In some mythologies, there are stories of guardians, watching over homes and other buildings. In return for their service, they require either food or lodging or other gifts, depending on the story. In some cases, a spell or prayer is required to call a guardian spirit to a recently built home.

So, when the engineers at Starfleet finish building the Enterprise, and ask whatever powers there are to bless and protect it, it is the spirit world that answers. One of these spirits is born as a human, named Hoshi by her parents, and grows up quite unaware of her destiny. By the time the Enterprise is finished, Hoshi is all grown up and old enough to serve on the ship, to protect it, to be its guardian spirit. When she finds out, she wants to flip out, to fight it, but it also doesn't come as a surprise.

She's always known what she is. She may not have been conscious of it, and she may not like it, may not believe herself particularly qualified, but it is her calling.

\--

The first time Hoshi walks onto the Enterprise, it welcomes her, but the feeling isn't what she expected. It doesn't feel like home. That eventually changes.

* * *

After the briefing with the captain, Hoshi heads down to sickbay to see Malcolm.

“I’m sorry for just stepping over you and leaving you there to bleed,” she says to a Malcolm who is rather loopy on pain medication, the piece of wall having been removed from his body. He forgives her, tries to turn towards her but cannot because of the way he is restrained, and then repeats his forgiveness.

On her way out of sickbay, she begins to feel the way Malcolm looked, and just about makes it to her quarters. She spends the best part of the next thirty-eight hours sleeping.

\--

Some of the things that happen in those thirty-eight hours:

Captain Archer finishes his report, and then calls Hoshi over the communicator to ask if she could finish hers quite soon. She wakes up, blearily replies that she is feeling tired, and he lets her get back to sleep.

Captain Archer has dinner with Trip and T’Pol. Trip jokes that Hoshi is probably a witch, and tries to convince T’Pol that magic is real, and he himself has met some friendly spirits once. The mystery of the road in T’Pol’s meditation is solved, although T’Pol does not share this with Trip. She insists that magic does not exist and there is no logic to his claim. She would never admit it, but she quite enjoys seeing Trip’s reaction whenever she brings up the word “logic”.

Travis Mayweather has a nice glass of synthetic blood and settles in with a nice book in his quarters before falling asleep early.

Malcolm Reed wakes up in sickbay late at night and, having more awareness of his surroundings than when he was first brought in and drugged, sighs deeply and wonders if he isn’t spending more time in sickbay than in his own quarters on this mission.

T’Pol meditates, and when she sees the road she walks towards it. It is a bit beside the point of her meditation to follow it and figure out where it leads, but since it’s right there in her mind she figures she might as well. She falls asleep next to her candle before she reaches the end, or even the edge of the desert.

The next morning, Hoshi Sato does not show up for her shift, nor does she deliver the promised report. T’Pol knocks on her door, and when a bleary-eyed Hoshi opens it, T’Pol realises the Enterprise was not in her mind last night when she meditated. Hoshi is sent to sickbay, in case her fatigue is related to something the aliens may have done to her, and she sleeps while Phlox examines her. There is nothing wrong with her, besides her lack of energy, and she requires help getting back to her quarters.

Malcolm Reed wakes up in sickbay, again, and is given permission to leave as long as he doesn’t go back on duty or really do much of anything. After all, Phlox reminds him, he had a piece of the Enterprise inside his body. Malcolm agrees (though not out loud) that it was not an ideal situation – it may be Trip’s fantasy but not his. Trip, somewhere in Engineering, has the vague notion that he should be offended at something.

One of Phlox’s creatures escapes. A half hour of panic ensues. The creature is caught and Phlox gives it a stern talking-to, which it does not understand, being a worm with no hearing organs and no sentience to understand the words, even if it was able to hear them.

The Enterprise travels approximately 3.5 trillion kilometres.

Phlox, concerned for how long Hoshi has spent sleeping, brings in a tray of food for her and uses the opportunity to examine her again. He finds nothing at all wrong with her. Hoshi thanks him for the breakfast, and he tells her it is dinnertime. Hoshi, now quite awake, spends some time writing her report. She takes a shower and changes clothes. She thinks about wandering around the ship for a bit, and then decides against it as fatigue overtakes her again.

T’Pol meditates again. She continues to follow the road, which is seemingly endless. She wonders if it is worth following, if it leads anywhere at all. And yet, patient as she is, she continues onwards.

The night is slow and boring.

Hoshi wakes up, and she feels actually awake once more. She puts on her uniform and reports for duty.

\--

T’Pol, after four nights of following the road that cuts through her mind, reaches the end. She doesn’t know where she is, exactly, besides that it is somewhere on Earth. Ahead of her is a bridge, and she can see water flowing peacefully under it, but she cannot step on the bridge. The road ends. She turns back to her desert, her curiosity left unsatisfied.

A month out from Earth, they are nearing familiar territory once more. In a week, they will reach Vulcan space. She’ll ask to be dropped off at Vulcan on the way to Earth, just for a brief leave before joining the rest of Starfleet for the NX-02 launch. It’s been a long time since she’s been home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading. There will be an epilogue after this, which I will post just as soon as I've finished writing it. Other than that, we're pretty much done here - I hope you've enjoyed this (assuming anyone has even read this far). :)


	9. Sunlight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to write this ages ago, and then the depression + grad school combo decided to kick my ass, and then I had to go out and buy a new keyboard because I'm a human disaster. But here it is! Featuring grad student Hoshi, characters being friends, and a bunch of headcanons about families. (I could write a book about all my Reed family headcanons I swear.)
> 
> Huge thanks to GuardianofFun for their super lovely comment, by the way! I don't have the words to express how much that comment meant to me. It not only made my day, it just about made my month.

Malcolm sometimes wonders what the point is of windows on the Enterprise. They are the weakest spots in the hull, and there is very little to see outside them, just tiny pinpricks of light in the distance for months on end. If there is anything else, the viewscreens can give a much better view - that is, after all, their function. Now, however, the cabins and corridors fortunate enough to contain windows are flooded with sunlight, and the bridge gets the most of it.

  
The ship never seems so dark and grey as it does when it has been freshly washed with sun. Malcolm feels sorry to go back to his quarters after the ship docks and the shift ends, even if it is only to pick up his bag. Earth is a brief shuttle-ride away, as is shore leave.

  
Trip, high on light, swears he will not go inside for even a moment during the month or so they are staying on the planet, and everyone in the shuttle decides it isn't worth it to remind him of the meetings and briefings and training days he will have to attend. Only Travis points out that it might rain, and Trip says he'll get an umbrella. His tone implies that this umbrella might be used to hit anyone who rains on Trip's parade, rather than to protect Trip from the rain.

  
Once on Earth, the Enterprise crew are almost immediately free to go their own ways. There isn't much point to meetings and briefings when the first officer is already on shore leave, having gotten off the ship at the last stop on Vulcan, and so only Captain Archer has work to do.

  
\--

  
Although Hoshi feels weird about leaving the Enterprise, she is looking forward to seeing her family. It is true she grew up feeling lonely, and she is not particularly close to her family, but she has a connection to them nonetheless, and maybe they will see her in a different light now. She is no longer a child, but a grown adult.

  
Malcolm, similarly, has mixed feelings about seeing his family. He knows from previous visits that the first day home will consist of vague regret at not having been in touch, some small talk, and at least five cups of tea, perhaps more if Madeline is home. He sometimes wonders if his family do not love, or if he simply cannot feel it.

  
The Tucker family has taken it upon themselves to invite most of the Enterprise crew to their home, although whether it is a genuine invitation or just a polite thing to say is unclear. In the case of Travis, however, it is rather genuine, and with his own family quite a few light years away, he accepts. Travis finds the Tuckers are much like his own family - loud and friendly - but does joke that they are more down to Earth (a pun which Trip gets after only a few moments, to his credit).

  
T'Pol, back on Vulcan, is enjoying the warmth of home. While there, she also attends to practical matters, like her own wedding and her resignation, accepting a commission offered to her by Starfleet. She does not expect either of these things to alter her life in any significant way, the biggest change being the uniform she will wear once she re-joins the Enterprise crew.

  
\--

  
In England, very little has changed. The day after Malcolm arrives, the family down the road host a barbecue, as they do every summer, and the Reeds attend, as they have always done. It is a great opportunity for both Malcolm and Madeline to feel like children again (if not in a good way, necessarily).

  
Malcolm spends most of his time in the garden, reading, while Madeline spends two days working until her mother complains. Madeline jokes that she makes up for it by using her office hours only for naps and relaxation, but takes the hint and spends the rest of her holiday bothering Malcolm. She beats him at a videogame based around shooting hostile aliens - that is, his job - and she promises to never let him live it down.

  
As for the lycanthropy, that comes out one calm Wednesday evening. It is incredible freeing, somehow, to wake up the next morning in the woods, just after dawn. He feels exhausted and bruised, and the lingering taste of his successful hunt (possibly a squirrel, though he doesn't want to know) makes him feel sick. And yet, as he dresses, he feels powerful somehow. He feels inhuman, but it doesn't bother him the way it used to. His time on the Enterprise, and the last year in particular, has taught him some things about humanity: there is no one specific way to be human, and being human is not the only way to be. He is allowed this existence, and he is allowed to make it his own.

  
\--

  
Travis passes off the packets of dried blood as medication for a cardio-vascular disorder. Trip, who has known nothing of this, worries but is finally convinced not to when Travis points out that he has been living with this his entire time on the Enterprise, and is absolutely fine.

  
They go for a drive around the countryside, and Trip's sister rolls her eyes in the backseat as they reach the location of Trip's otherwordly encounter. Lizzie's version of the story is much shorter than Trip's would have been if he'd been allowed to tell it:

  
"Trip accidentally gave a lift to a hitch-hiking ghost, or that's what he says. If he had, he wouldn't be alive right now."

  
"It was a friendly spirit! It just needed to get from point A to point B. Anyway, it protects me, I haven't run into a single unfriendly spirit round these parts since."

  
The fact that Lizzie's argument against this experience was not its supernatural nature, but rather that Trip survived it, makes Travis wonder just how much is really out there. How many things are hidden just beneath the surface of the world, how many experiences are left un-shared because they would not be believed. Maybe the seemingly high concentration of supernatural beings on the Enterprise is not a statistical anomaly at all.

  
\--

  
Hoshi grows tired of her family after a week, and travels to Brazil. Her students have all either graduated or will do so at the next round of graduation ceremonies, and she wanders around the campus remembering how happy she was there. She had gone through Starfleet training during her master's degree, part of a graduate programme sponsored by Starfleet, and had only just qualified for her PhD candidacy when Captain Archer came to recruit her. Doing her thesis aboard a starship had not been exactly what the programme was created for, but her advisory committee had agreed, and now she was to meet with them for the first time in over a year.

  
A few months of writing, they estimate, and she could be Dr. Hoshi Sato. Hoshi nearly falls off her chair at this - sure, she's been working her butt off the last few years, but she wasn't sure she had enough for a doctoral thesis. As the meeting progresses, it becomes clear that Hoshi will either have to significantly delay her graduation, or stay behind as the Enterprise leaves in three weeks' time. She will stay in Brazil to complete her teaching requirements and finish her thesis, and then hope Starfleet reassigns her to the Enterprise.

  
\--

  
The NX-02 reaches the edge of the solar system and makes the jump to warp with most of Earth watching. As it disappears into space, Hoshi wonders if there is anyone like her on board.

  
The Enterprise crew are all gathered in San Francisco, and Hoshi picks this as an appropriate time to break the news to her friends. She will be staying behind to finish her thesis. Archer promises to do everything in his power to get her back on his ship, if she promises to write fast.

  
"What will we do without you?" Malcolm asks once Travis finally lets Hoshi go from the bone-crushing hug he gives her.

  
"I'm not the only linguist in Starfleet," she replies, though she knows that isn't what he meant.

  
T'Pol hugs her next, surprising everyone with what appears to be an emotional gesture, but her cool Vulcan face betrays nothing, until Hoshi compliments her uniform. T'Pol smiles.

  
The things once in Hoshi's quarters on the Enterprise are now in a small apartment on Earth, and it feels almost unnatural to wake up to sunlight every morning. Her friends head back up into space, Malcolm placing a new family photo on his desk, and T'Pol decorating her quarters with a small jar of sand from her mother's backyard. _Home is where the heart is_ , the saying goes, but home is not just one place.

  
\--

  
In early 2155, the Columbia returns to Earth for repairs, conveniently just in time to be assigned a mission: the transport of one Dr. Sato to the Enterprise. Hoshi spends a few weeks on board as a civilian, though not idle, being tasked with helping update the Universal Translator systems on board after first contact with a species that uses no spoken language. Finally, in early May, the two ships meet up and Hoshi is transported on the Enterprise. Out of all the places she has left in her life, it is the one that feels most like home when she returns.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it lads, it's over! Thanks for reading!


End file.
